Wednesday, December 2, 2009

If your not on Flickr yet, it is now time to join! I've found it helps bring traffic to both this blog, and my personal site. It's a great place to showcase your work and to get feedback on results from recent shoots. I recommend joining many groups that reflect what you shoot and which equipment you use. From there you can post your images in groups and people will view and maybe comment on your images.

Recently, leading stock photography agency Getty Images started a Flickr based collection of photos for sale on their website. This could potentially be a good source of income, and may lead to a working relationship with the company. They ask that you submit your top 10 images that they could potentially sell. From there, they pick a few photographers a month, and add their photos to the Getty flickr collection. If you think you have good enough shots for this, than the time to jump on it is NOW! Here is a link to the Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/callforartists/

If your just starting out as a stock photographer and have some amazing work, I recommend contacting Cavan Images as well. They are a new stock agency and will pay for your photos up front. This way you can collect some money to put back towards your business.

Stock agencies are very diverse in the type of work they are looking to sell, and how they will sell it. Do your research first, and pick whichever one is right for you. They vary in how they pay, but for the most part you will earn a percentage of every sale. This is a dream for photographers who are not very good about marketing their work.

There are also now microstock agencies that sell images for rates of around $1 and up. It may not sound like much, but with enough images posted there are people making several thousand dollars a month up to even $30,000 and more a month. Check out Yuri Arcurs (The world's leading microstock photographer) for examples and for tips on how to make it as a microstock photographer. Some microstock sites that are good to work with are: Fotolia, Shutterstock, and Istockphoto.